Are Maoism and Mensheviks the same thing?

Measured across six independent axes they are 20.7 apart out of a possible 49.0, which is opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on EC, CU. They diverge by eight points or more on AU, ID, CH.

Atlas / Comparisons / Maoism vs Mensheviks

Maoism and Mensheviks

Measured distance across six axes

20.7 / 49.0 possible

Opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on EC, CU. They diverge by eight points or more on AU, ID, CH.

Axis by axis

Axis	Mao Zedong Thought	RSDLP(m)	Gap		Reading
EC · Economic organisation	−10	−08	2	Agrees	Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about.
CU · Social and cultural order	−02	−05	3	Agrees	Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about.
AU · Organisation of power	+10	−04	14	Diverges	Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
SC · Scale of decision	+09	+03	6	Differs	Real difference, but not the dividing line.
ID · Rule of membership	+04	−07	11	Diverges	Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.
CH · Method and tempo	+10	+02	8	Diverges	Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this.

Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →

The evidence behind the widest gaps

A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.

Mao Zedong Thought · AU +10

At the ceiling, with the distinctive feature that the party's own institutions were destroyed from above and below.

Documented act or statuteThe head of state was purged and died in detention in 1969 without trial.

RSDLP(m) · AU −04

Committed to an open mass party and a constituent assembly, and destroyed by the faction that was not.

Programme textMartov's 1903 formulation would have admitted any member who assisted the party, against Lenin's requirement of participation in an organisation.
Documented act or statuteThe party was banned and its leaders exiled or imprisoned by 1921.

Mao Zedong Thought · ID +04

Coded moderately positive: class background was hereditary in practice and determined life chances.

ScholarshipClass labels assigned in the land reform were inherited and governed schooling, marriage and employment for decades.

RSDLP(m) · ID −07

Universalist on the same terms as classical Marxism.

Programme textParty programme framed emancipation in class terms with no ascriptive criterion.

What this comparison does not establish

Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.

Maoism

1949–1976 · China

Peasant-based revolution, continuous class struggle after the seizure of power, permanent mobilisation against the party's own institutions.

Mensheviks

1903–1921 · Russia

Russia must pass through a bourgeois-democratic stage; socialism cannot be decreed by a minority.

Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.

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